11 Crap Self-Improvement Blog Posts I’d Boot off the Net Forever

No, it’s OK, I can handle it. I realise I can’t always expect you to go without until our next weekly session together.

Besides, I do understand that there are some things you just can’t get from our relationship.

Things like these annoying list posts, for a start:

15 Inspiring Quotes About Life I Cobbled Together From Other People’s Websites in Five Minutes Flat

Everything I write for you comes from my own brain, a weird and magical place filled with beautiful and practical ideas from a lifetime of being Emily. I don’t copy bits from other sites and just jazz them up with a sunrise or photogenic dolphin picture. What you’ll find here is stuff that’s new and different.

Revealed! The 3 Amazing Secrets of How I Started Out Healthy, Gorgeous and Rich and Earned Loads More Money as a Life Coach

Don’t bother, I think we’ve all guessed…

There’s nothing helpful about bragging about your luck. We all have our own strengths and talents, but self-improvement blog ideas should be success stories we can aspire to copy without needing to use Daddy’s business connections and wads of Mummy’s cash to get started.

If you’ve got those advantages, that’s great. Use them. Just don’t claim it was all your achievement!

101 Mystic Ways to Bring Solace to Your Soul: How Tarot Cards and Healing Crystals and Endless Other Junk Can Help You Avoid Trying to Solve Your Problems

Oh, it wasn’t you, of course. It was your destiny to live in sorrow. There was nothing you could do because it was all written in the stars.

You could easily waste the rest of your life clicking from one horoscope site or mystic healing psychic adviser to another, trying to prove that your troubles really come from an unfortunate lack of lucky silver leprechauns, being born in the Year of the Wombat, not wearing the colour red on Wednesdays or falling in love with a Gemini. Rather than coming from your own flaws, unwise choices and maybe just sheer bad luck.

Let me save you the suspense:

Those people are not psychic – just very good at expressing themselves vaguely and drawing out information from you slowly until they’ve figured out what you want them to say. At £15 – £30 an hour, of course they’re patient and sympathetic. For as long as you like. No, don’t worry, they’re happy to wait until you’ve stopped crying. Don’t forget your credit card.

Your family and friends could give you much better advice because they actually know you. And no doubt they have – and you haven’t taken it.

If you don’t like your friends’ advice, you don’t have to follow it. But paying random strangers to listen to you wailing on about your problems for hours so they can tell you it’s not your fault will not help you change what’s wrong.

And filling your house with lumps of rock, genuine invisible faeries, lucky four-leaf clovers kissed by the Pope and bits of cardboard with pretty Tarot pictures on cannot make your life happier if you don’t take positive action to improve it yourself.

39 Convincing Reasons to Bully You Into Buying My Absolutely Outstanding Ebook Even Though You Don’t Want It or Need It

Yeah, I’ve written an ebook. It’s called Better than Leaving: Find Ways to be Happy in a Bad Marriage by Emily Lock, available from Amazon. (I think my ex-husband bought the first copy to see what I’d said about him!) If you haven’t got an unhappy marriage, you don’t need to buy it.

And, yes, I’m working on a series of books on other topics, and I’m planning to create some self-improvement courses. Subscribe to Emily the Dodo now and I’ll send you the details when they’re ready. I won’t send you 50 pushy emails about each one until you just want to slap me.

If you buy my books and courses, I’ll get some money. Yippee! Maybe one day I’ll be rich and famous!

But I won’t give you a hard sell or expect you to sign up to my mailing list before you’ve even had a chance to look at my first blog page – that’s not the kind of person I am, and it never will be.

14 Self-Righteous Excuses to Justify Dumping Your Poor, Needy Old Friends So You Can Have a Happy Life With Your Successful, Good-Looking New Ones

It’s for their own good. Honest.

Without you there to support and encourage them, they’re much more likely to try to improve their lives. So you’re actually doing them a favour by not helping them.

And that’s what friends are for – right?

10 Delicious Foods I’ve Randomly Decided You Must Never Eat Again

I’ll always give you my advice, but I’ll never try to tell you what to do. We’re both adults.

And you’re free to make your own decisions, so have as many bananas as you want. Just try to cut down to 10 a day if you can.

7 Miniscule Snippets of Information Unnecessarily Spread Over 7 Pages So They Can Be Surrounded By Plenty of Adverts

…and on those kind of sites, the adverts are always cunningly disguised to look like the arrow you click to see the next snippet, aren’t they? Grr!

No wonder so many people loathe adverts and avoid on principle any sites which carry them. But that’s ridiculous. They don’t avoid newspapers and magazines which have them!

A hospital where all the staff are unpaid amateurs wouldn’t be a better place, and nor would the internet.

And if you expect professional work, the site has to pay its writers somehow.

Anyway, you won’t see any ads on Emily the Dodo… as long as you all buy my ebooks!

16 Toxic Habits You Never Felt Guilty About Until You Read This

In case you didn’t have enough problems, we’ve invented a whole bunch more for you to worry about.

Do you feed your dog too often because it keeps looking cute? Or start a new To Do list before you’ve crossed off everything on the last one?

Oh, dear.

Do you throw away the last crinkly bit of aluminium foil and start a new roll? Or avoid answering the phone at work because you’re due to leave in another 2 minutes? Or leave half a cucumber in your refrigerator after it’s gone all flobbery and leaking, hoping your partner will see it first and deal with it?

Tut, tut. You really are a mess, aren’t you?

The Ultimate Guide to 2000 Affiliate Links for Stuff I Haven’t Actually Tried

It’s helpful to add links to useful, relevant products which really work. And if the person who told you about it gets money for finding you as a customer – well, that’s only reasonable. If you prefer to read articles without in-yer-face flashing adverts, the website still needs to pay its way somehow.

It’s even fair to add links to lots of products on one page – it can be a useful resource list for the reader to explore.

The problem comes with self-styled experts who write crappy lists with almost no other information or details of the items, simply to recommend products that ‘sounded OK’ just because they can rake in more cash and not because they know they’re worth buying.

I’ll always play straight with you – and that’s a promise. If I review or recommend a book, website or product, I’ve read it or used it and I felt it might help you.

6 Sensuous Massage Techniques For You And Your Partner With Photos of People Who Make You Hate Your Own Body

You look at the gleaming, toned, luscious bodies of the 19-year-old models and you think:

“Hmm… My partner and I might enjoy giving them a massage, but we’re hardly going to break out the baby oil for each other these days. Anyway, I really need to lose ten pounds first. OK, maybe twenty. And start going to the gym again. For about threeyears. And I still wouldn’t look that good. Sigh. How could I have let myself go like this? Oh, I’m too depressed to bother with sex now…”

I am soooo sick of seeing stuff about Green Tea! What is it with that stuff? Not only do they admit it tastes absolutely vile, the claims for this ‘miracle drink’ are enough to stretch the belief of the most credulous moron. It’s supposed to be even better than Paracetamoxyfrusebendroneomycin! And they know it works because they tested it on a few mice and none of them went purple or exploded. So that’s all right, then.

You won’t find any of this sort of tosh on my blog because I don’t believe it will make you happier or give you a better life. And that’s what I’m here for – YOU, not me.

So, when you go off behind my back because you’re tempted by other good-looking self-improvement sites, just remember it’s Emily the Dodo who really loves you.